Technology Runs Amuck

When I purchased my first computer in 1983, it was a dual-floppy Eagle with 128 k of memory. I soon learned that the machine had a peculiar quirk. When I booted it up in the morning, it would work fine for about five minutes, then the cursor would freeze. As a result, whatever work I had done in those five minutes was irretrievably lost. I complained to the guy who sold me the computer. When I told him about the problem, he said the problem was "highly unlikely." Then one morning he happened to be there when it happened, and he allowed as how he didn’t understand it at all. Then Bill came into my life. He said the same thing about the problem, "It’s highly unlikely." But I’m here to tell you that almost 30 years later, with the Eagle now ensconced in the Special Collections section of the University of Arizona Library–along with a whole catalog of accompanying manuals–it still does the same thing. If you want it to work–and it still does work, by the way–you have to boot it twice.

Let’s be clear. I’m a former blonde. Or maybe a recovering blonde. My basic expectation of technology is that when you turn it on or off and it works or doesn’t work as the case may be. Okay, so sometimes, when something doesn’t work it actually needs to be plugged in. Or the lightbulb has burned out and needs to be changed.

But long time readers of this blog already know that my relationship with computers is somewhat troubled. Like the time I answered a phone, dropped the laptop, and ended up putting my thumb through the screen in a futile effort to catch it. (Naturally this occurred on the day before I was scheduled to go on a book tour.)

This summer as we were getting ready to send out new book announcements, my IT gal and I noticed that there was a difference between the number of addresses listed in my computer and the number of addresses listed on Bill’s computer. We synched the files from my computer to his. Came out with a slightly different number in HIS computer but still not the same as the number of addresses as in MY computer. And what did Bill say to that? "It’s highly unlikely." Which is to say that lots of things have changed in 25 years but some things have not.

Back to technology. E-books are on the rise. There are Kindles, there are Nooks, there are Sony Readers, and any number of others. And so this summer, HarperCollins decided to try to win me a whole new batch of readers by offering a free e-book version of Hour of the Hunter. This is my favorite book. I’m always hoping to find new readers for that book, and the publication of the fourth book in that series, Queen of the Night, seemed like the perfect time to do that kind of promotion. So they did. And 50,000 people downloaded it. And then the something or other hit the fan.

There is already a version of Hour of the Hunter available on Kindle. I know. I bought one so I could have it available for consultation while I was writing Queen. But for the "free" promotion, they had to do a "new" edition. To do that they scanned the old file of the manuscript using an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program. Since this was "a very old pre 2005 file," as my editor called it, the OCR didn’t exactly recognize lots of the words. The resulting file was sort of like reading the book in not quite English. For instance, where I said "that" the free edition said "mat." Where I said "him"; the free edition said "nun." Where I said "thud," OCR said "mud." Where I said "truth," the free edition said "tram."

I can well imagine the frustration level for those readers went sky high, and they’ve been letting me know about it.

The situation is made even more puzzling by the fact that some e-book editions of that book–on the Sony Reader and Nook, for example, are fine. How can that be? Aren’t the supposed to be THE SAME???? To quote Bill Schilb on this, "It seems highly unlikely."

The upshot is that the free version has been taken down. It will be fixed, hopefully with human oversight done by someone who knows the difference between "mud" and "thud."

If you’re someone who has been the victim of a faulty version, please let me know so I can be sure once the e-book edition has been fixed that you’ll be able to have a good copy. I hate to think that there are 50,000 or so people out there who think this kind of slap-dash stuff is indicative of my body of work.

And if you managed to read it in spite of the wholesale misspellings, hat’s off to you. You qualify as a VERY motivated reader.